Archive for March, 2008

Management theory heavy-weight and über-econ-basher Jeffrey Pfeffer (cf. these posts) makes an appeareance in the Fall 2007 issue of . . . the Journal of Economic Perspectives — admittedly a rather “open” journal, but still one of the house journals of the American Economic Association. (more…)

The hunter-gatherer model of journalism is no longer sufficient. Citizens can do their own hunting and gathering on the Internet. What they need is somebody to add value to that information by processing it — digesting it, organizing it, making it usable.

This is why we still need newspapers — or something like them. Ronald Coase, the British economist, once asked why we need business firms. Why can’t all their activities be coordinated by individuals contracting with one another instead of working in a bureaucratic, command-and-control environment? The answer, he said, is transaction costs. If a manager had to negotiate with a free-lancer for every task, the cost in time would be unbearably high.

Searching for information on the Internet involves something like transaction costs because we have so many varied sources to evaluate. We need somebody we trust to organize them for us. That can be the task of the new journalism.

That’s from the retirement speech of UNC journalism professor Philip Meyer. Here is more. I like the attempt to characterize information intermediaries — which would include not only newspapers but also directories, databases, organized financial exchanges, ratings agencies, books, universities, and the like — as coordinating agents in the Coasian sense. But they needn’t include the fiat, or authority, that characterizes the Coasian firm. Instead they are probably better regarded as loosely structured networks or some other “hybrid” that combines elements of market and hierarchy. Your thoughts?

While vocational programs in law and medicine have long been accepted as legitimate parts of the Academy, and engineering, agriculture, and architecture have been welcomed since at least the late 19th century (in the US, after the Morrill Act), business and journalism have faced particular difficulties becoming integrated into the academic mainstream. Actually, journalism today is even more of an outsider than business administration; for example, while many B-school faculty hold PhDs in economics, sociology, psychology, or other “traditional” disciplines, many J-school professors do not hold PhDs at all, with most being former industry professionals, more like B-school clinical professors. Those of you interested in the history and current problems of business schools might learn something from the experiences of journalism and other professional schools.

What are our Lawyers made of?
What are our Lawyers made of?
Of Causes and fees, demurrers and pleas,
Learned Brother and lots of pother,
Counsel and jury with very wise looks,
Flaw in the indictment and statue books,
Such are our Lawyers made of,
Such are our Lawyers made of.

That’s one answer. It ain’t sugar and spice and everything nice, that’s for sure. Whatever lawyers are made of, should firms make them in-house, or hire ones made by somebody else? Steven Schwarcz addresses this question in a new paper, “To Make or to Buy: In-House Lawyering and Value Creation” (Journal of Corporation Law, Winter 2008). Schwarcz notes that large firms have been shifting much of their transactional work from outside law firms to in-house lawyers. Analysis of survey data suggests that information costs and scale and scope economies are the most important drivers of this trend. Asset specificity seems to play a less important role, mainly because reputation effects are sufficient to mitigate opportunistic behavior by outside law firms. A very interesting paper on the make-or-buy decision.

Dear colleagues, this post represents my 22nd and final post as a guest blogger on O&M. Over the last four months I have learned a lot about blogs and successful blogging. For instance, the average post on O&M gets seen/read by about 70 people in the first 48 hours. Of these, perhaps only 5% will comment on a post. But blog posts have an incredibly “long tail”. The top posts on O&M average 3,000 or more views, with the top post over 7,000 views (see physics envy if you wish to add to the count). As a result of this long tail of posts, O&M receives about 1,000 hits per day! (more…)

Back in grad school I was regularly hectored by a fellow student about joining the Association of Graduate Student Employees (AGSE), our local collective-bargaining association. Despite his attempt to stigmatize me as a free rider, I never joined. I didn’t think I agreed with the organizations goals, and I was sure I didn’t want to be associated with AGSE’s parent organization, the United Auto Workers (go figure). One year there was even a strike, which I found silly (I scabbed).

This semester I’m getting repeated invitations to join the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). Again, I hesitate. Of course, as an American university professor, I’m happy to see more power, prestige, and perquisites go to American university professors (OK, specifically, to me). But the AAUP has a strange agenda. Its mission includes not only protecting academic freedom and defending the role of the university in public life, but also preserving shared governance. Having spent many years in university settings, I’m convinced that shared governance is grossly inefficient, at least most of the time. There can be benefits, of course, to offset these costs, as is the case with worker-owned cooperatives and other non-standard forms of organization. But one searches the AAUP’s website in vain for any analysis or evidence on shared governance. What are the benefits and costs, relative to other feasible organizational forms? Why should professors defend this peculiar institution? (more…)